Week 3: My Delicious Links

Before going to bed early in the morning, I am publishing here the link to my Delicious page:
https://delicious.com/val_bel/

I hope you, my dear colleagues and friends will find something to your linking there. It wold be nice to know what and how YOU are going to use it.

I have also pasted it to our wiki and to the discussion at Nicenet.

Now, all the assignments fulfilled, I can treat myself to your delicious links too.

Happy surfing,

Val, Belarus

Week 3: Overworked, Thrilled, Enthusiastic

Week 3 is coming to a close, and I am happy to say that this week I have been much better organized and this allows me to enjoy the feeling of satisfaction both from learning and from proper time management.
This week was busier than the previous two, I had to stay at the University from morning till late in the evening.
Still, I managed to complete my Wednesday task in time, and I am nearly done with the remaining ones.
Following Yuliya's advice I entered everybody's URL into the Reader, and today I was able to scan all the posts at once! What a nice solution! Thank you, Yuliya, again.
I was delighted to see that other people started posting images too. I think everyone will agree that visuals make our blogs more attractive and exciting. I have got a couple of new photos too, but I will keep them in secret until I have time to process them and write comments. First things first - now I have to reflect and summarize.
I really enjoyed the assignment of Week 3, both the oral/aural and project analysis.  I am so happy to study in such an enthusiastic team - I find it both pleasant and effective. Today (it was the first day when I had a chance to check the links) I have book marked more nice EFL resources than over a couple of years.
Most of them are "conventional" CALL sites (is this word is applicable to CALL at all),  very nice, though.
However,. there were some principally new ones, such as posting voice records online, using graphical representation of the sounds and prosody, interacting with EFL and other speakers of English teachers on-line, etc.
And I was very happy to see that there are people in our team who have been already practicing DVCs and who are interested to try them out. I hope we will stay in contact after the course is finished and will start "dating" online with our students.

I enjoyed reading a sample project and other Webskillers' comments. It is always easier to analyze somebody else's work and avoid common mistakes. I hope I will manage to look through some other projects before we start Week 4.
The only thing I have not begun yet is Delicious. Just because it is delicious I will do it at the end. I'm sure, once I start working with links there will be no end, and I wish to complete all the task, so, first things first.
Wishing all of you good night or a nice day, I am leaving you until tomorrow.

Week 2: Frustrations and Achievements

What a nice idea it was to offer us running a blog as a reflective learning tool! I’m so happy I have this private space, where I can write what I want without aligning my texts with the rules and common sense considerations. I do not mean that I mind rules – no, just on the contrary I view our rules as a guarantee of success and I do not think it would be right to abuse other people’s time with lengthy and sometimes off-topic comments I wish to make. Keeping them to myself is not the best way either, because (1) writing or speaking helps me to figure out better what is going on in my mind, and (2) my reflections can be useful to someone, who is experiencing similar problems and is looking for solutions. Thus, a reflective blog is just perfect for the purpose of reflective learning. 

So, our second week is coming to the end. It has been much more effective, I suppose. I was about to mess it up at the beginning, but I stopped early, and now the learning is running smoothly.

Frustrations of Week 2

At the end of Week 1 I made a resolution to prioritize my activities better. Still, on Monday I found myself writing for my blog and thinking about some technical problems that had been left unanswered. In particular, I was preoccupied with access issues. I fully understand people, who were happy just to start blogging. So was I after creating my first blog. Soon, however, my excitement faded away, because I discovered that I had been spending a lot of time on writing what I thought was useful, but nobody read it! There was no traffic at all!!! Only spammers promoting prostitutes in all cities of Russia. It took me weeks of daily cleaning before I learned how to keep that spam away. 

Now I do not concern myself much about the content or design – I know that I can deal with that. Technical issues, such as Google analytical tools, liking profiles on all other social networks, etc. are what interest me. Also security, eliminating robots and spies, and all other kind of malicious software… 

So, preoccupied with all this I went to the Discussions to start a thread about these issues.

I went there and … I discovered that while I was mentally stuck to blogs, other people were going forward: doing reading, exploring search engines, writing objectives, discussing due issues. That was the first frustration of the day.

The second one followed shortly. I started reading the posts, and I discovered that I could not understand what people are talking about. I wrote to Jodi, who, definitely, was sleeping at that time and asked her a lot of questions. 

And only then a very clever idea struck my mind: what is I just open the instructions and will start doing the assignment step by step, as suggested? And – surprise, surprise! – I found answers to all the questions I had asked Jodi. I still can’t understand why I didn’t do obvious things? It’s such a thoughtful, well-structured course, with clear, well-written instruction – why should I focus on what IS NOT given, instead of first taking what IS offered and asking my questions later, when appropriate?

Resolutions of Week 2

I was really angry with myself. I hope these two additional frustrations are enough to get me on the right track. I have outlined a schedule for myself. I will publish it here for two purposes:

1) let my tutors see what I am going to do and correct me, if I do something wrong;

2) manage my friends expectations in case I can’t respond timely to their posts and comments.

So, here we go:

Mondays: Reading other participants’ blogs

Tuesdays: Posting 1st weekly assignment earl

Wednesday: Reading for the 2^nd weekly assignment

Thursday: Interacting at the Discussions

Friday: Posting my 2^nd weekly assignment

Saturday: Bloggin

Sunday: reading ahead (the upcoming week)

In short, the way to avoid stress and frustrations is: reading ahead, early posting, checking other people’s writing after the deadline.

Dear friends, I understand how it feels when you write something, and people do not respond. I will surely respond to everyone who talks to me after I am done with the assignments. 

 Achievements of Week 2

I tried this new way on studying on Thursday, and I was very happy: I didn’t miss a single post, and I completed reading all the posts and writing replies in one run! What an improvement in comparison with Week1. when I spent hours and hours recurrently visiting blogs that were not updated. 

Thus, looking back at the slipping away week I can say that there is at least one thing I have learned – I learned to organize myself.

As for learning web-skills, our dear teachers Jodi and Sherie don’t need to worry: I have been practicing this play-camel way each time I had intensive training course, and it was always successful. Play-camel way of learning means that I do as much as time permits me, but I carefully save the remaining materials, activities, links and tasks, and go over them after the course is finished. This time too, I have carefully harvested all the links from the Week assignments and from my mates’ posts, and I will explore them at ease later.

Besides, I have explored JupiterGrades. What a nice tool ! I especially liked the calendar. With such a tool one does not need to keep a journal – the assignment will be reminded automatically. I very nice way to monitor the process.

This is all from me by now.

P.S.

By the way, I found a video about circles. One can watch it on

https://plus.google.com/u/0/getstarted/findpeople

It’s on the right, under the title What are circles? If someone is also interested how to get traffic to the web-site, you are welcome to view it.

A Bit of Culture Study

We are here to study technology. But as I mentioned earlier, I support the idea that technology is something BETWEEN people, and people are the ultimate interest which technology should help satisfy.
I hope you won't consider it violation of rules if I paste a couple of photos of my country here.
This winter was onlу month late. We all felt that it was wrong. Snow, due early in december, arrived only a few days ago, and now I can show you how it looks like (the picture was taken yesterday, Jan. 16, 2012):

Snowy Minsk 2012

Most of the participants live in hot climates. Have you ever seen icicles? This is how they look like (fresh from the outdoors ;-)

Icicles can be nice to look at, but  it's a hazard. Earlier or later they are going to fall down and can injure or even kill people. This is why they have to be removed as soon as possible, and there are services, who do that.

Hope you'll find this interesting (at the same time I have been practicing pasting images).
Have a nice day!

Summary of Week 1: General Feedback

I feel that I am getting addicted to our class. Coming back home at 10.30 p.m. after my evening classes I promise myself to go straight to bed and have a good sleep before my morning classes, but when I enter my room I feel so tempted to see what has been happening here – I push the taboo button and spend three to four hours with you. I don't want to miss a single line of you, my dear friends, both teachers and participants, because I realize that just in a nine-week time this wonderful opportunity will be gone and I should value every minute of it.

The end of a week is a good time to reflect and summarize. 

Following advice to give information is manageable chunks (Guidelines and http://umbc.uoregon.edu/eteacher/webskills/material/webskills_discussion_guidelines+rubric.pdf) I will split my reflections into three parts:

1)         General feefback (down here)

2)         Experiences with using Nicenet

3)         Experiences with blogging

So: General Feedback

This is my first experience taking a distant learning cause. I was mentally prepared, as back in 2003 I was a participant of an International Visitor Program offered by the U.S. Department of State, most of which was about distant learning, a buzz word at that time. Besides, a couple of my friends took distant learning courses and let me see how it goes. However, knowing things and doing things are two different stories, and my first experiences gave me a lot of positive emotions. I find it highly effective and convenient (we can do things when we have spare time).

One thing I definitely like about this course is its practical orientation.

The second good thing is that there is no spoon feeding. There are guidelines, but we feel free to decide how and when to do things. At the same time, in case of difficulties, our tutors give us timely replies. Thank you, Sherie and Jodi, for that. I know that it’s a challenge to timely see what is requested by every individual here.

I like that the course is highly interactive. I wish all the participants were active. There are people I was fascinated to meet who, unfortunately, seldom pop up. It's a great pity. I wish I could hear from EVERYONE. 

In the middle of the week I started started experiencing difficulties with matching posts with people. So, I decided to compile a table with the names, photos, location, professional data and hobbies for each participant. I copy-pasted the data from the Introductions and from blogs. I found it VERY helpful!!! Now, each time I read something I go to this “registry” to have a look at the photo. After a couple of days of doing so I feel that I can already clearly identify all active participants.

The tasks given have been useful and manageable. However, I don’t think I have performed them with excellence. Here is what I wanted to do, what was done and what remains on the list.

Planned	Done	Remain
Reading the instructions Week 1	+ (missed the rubrics, had to go back and re-read)
Exploring the course website	+	Have to read more materials suggested there
Filling out the needs assessment survey	+	Would like see the results after everyone fills it out. Please, suggest how I can do it.
Introducing myself	+
Getting to know other participants	Have an idea of about 10 participant, interacted with 8 (only half of the group – what a pity!)	- Look forward to more details about others - Read Vijay’s poetry- Explore the map to see the place where people live (I did that only with the first ones, and I find it rewarding) - talk with Hassan about encouraging  students while teaching technical writing
“Registry” of Participants	Have created it and half compiled	Have to complete 9 entries Paste in online for others to check the data and use it too.
Ground rules discussion	+
Nicenet	+	Have to paste fun links I promised to Yuliya
Creating my own blog	+
Reading other blogs	Have visited 17 blogs	Visit the 3 blogs that are missing  now- Check the links suggested by Salam (http://salam-sparrow.blogspot.com/) -Continue reading blogs

The reasons why I could not complete what I wanted were: 

1)      I didn't have a CLEAR idea of how to set priorities. Solution: better planning

2)      I wasted a day and a half, because I had to repeat the creation of my blog, as the first version of it was made inaccessible by local IT providers (a technical problem)Solution: resolved

3)      Having several email addresses made it difficult to handle my mail. Now I have one address for this course, which has made my life easier.Solution: resolved

4)      I spent too much time trying to follow everybody’s posts and blogs, which is time consuming. I still don't know how to get to the last postings straight away. If someone knows it, please, advise.Solution: discuss this on Nicenet

5)      Trying to compete my “registry” I kept visiting the blogs, which were not completed by the time of my first visit at the end of the week, in hope to find the missing photos and subscribe to. I found this on some blogs, but entries for 9 (!) people still remain unfinished, which mean I will have to make another round. I think respecting deadlines would save time of others. Or, at least, letting other people know when we are going to do what is expected from us. Solution: talk about it on Nicenet

The conclusions I have made:

1)      I should be more attentive when reading the assignments and do more reading of the materials.

2)      Each week I have to create a detailed check list

3)      I should reverse the order: fulfill the assignment first, and then do interaction

4)      I will check the postings close to the deadline.

5)      I should better proofread my texts (oh, that’s a burden for me!)

I have to stop now. As soon as I have another gap in my schedule, I will write about using Nicenet and blogging.

I look forward to your comments on what I have written here. Have you experienced the same problems or different? How did you cope with them?

A Lasting Rewarding Love Story (My IT Background And My Vision of the Future)

This relationship began back in the early 1990s, when I was working in a small city in a peripheral area. As always before earth turning events, there was a message to alert one to the change. In my case, it was a letter from abroad, which was different from any other letters we had seen before. It looked like a page from a book! The font was different from what we used to see, and there were no typewriter imprints!!! We were puzzled. 

A foreign student explained that that letter was produced by a COMPUTER. A computer? How could it be? We knew what computers were. They were mysterious huge machines behind doors with “Stuff Only” sign, and the only things we had ever seen them producing were perforated cards, which were very handy to keep bibliographical records on. So, we didn’t believe it. 

Later, there was a program on TV, in which a professor from Minsk State Linguistic University was speaking about reading a book on a computer. I tried to imagine how it was possible to insert a book into a TV-set, and my mind went blanc.

This was my starting point in 1990. A year later, I enrolled for a post-graduate course and moved to Minsk. I was going to study the pragmatics of the written text, which fascinated me. Apart from that, there were two more intentions in my mind: to find a well-paid job and to learn how to use computers. I found both in a small company, which was providing translation services. I successfully did a test translation, and they offered we a job under the condition that I would type translated documents on a COMPUTER. I could use a typewriter, so I agreed.

At that type my computer skills were zero. I didn’t know how to turn on a computer! Diskettes? I was absolutely sure that the term “hard disk” was used to refer to a 3 1⁄2-inch floppy disk, because, unlike the 8-inch floppy disk, it was packed in the hard case. (I am sure neither of these terms sound familiar to half of our group -  well, just skip them). There was a DOS interface, no idea of a mouse or windows, and all commands had to be typed. I even didn’t try to learn how to do that – so obscure and impossible it seemed to me.

Soon, however, there was a change. The boss of the company brought Widows from Germany. I guess, it was one of the first copies of Windows in Belarus. Banks, the most affluent institutions at that time, started installing Windows half a year later. The boss, enchanted by hypertext possibilities, wanted to make a break through – to launch a technology, that would allow to switch between text, sound, and graphic files. (Remember, it was 1993, the word “multimedia” had not been coined yet). He hired programmers to write the shell, and he needed linguists to create content. They offered, and I agreed. This is how my engagement with IT started.

As in all new couples, at the beginning there were frictions. I didn’t know how to insert a floppy disk, but my job required that I scanned texts, recorded and digitized sound, processed graphics, etc. The programmers, who worked in the office next to me, thought that the best way to explain how to do all that stuff was to say,” Why don’t you understand this?!!! It’s so easy!!!” Then: click- click-click - and the thing is done! And I remained without a slightest idea of how I would do it next time, again feeling stupid and miserable. Another way to training was to say, “You are here to do the job, not to be trained. If you don’t understand something, there is a Windows manual on the shelf, get it and find the answer” (The manual was two volumes 500 pages each, all in English).

However, there is always someone, who would try to help newlyweds find a way to harmony. Such was the CEO of the company, who would come and quietly dictate all the clicks I needed to perform, and I would carefully write them in my notebook. So, little by little, I started understanding the computer, and it started rewarding me for that.

After two years with that company I bought myself my first computer (in 1994), and in 1996 I became one of the first Belarusian users of the Internet. In 1995 I was invited to design an ESP course for interpreters, who were trained to work for the emerging IT sector. This is how I started learning Computer Science – never as an IT specialist, but as a linguist, trying to understand the meaning of the mysterious words I had been already using. Later I was engaged as an interpreter in some IT seminars, which were also a kind of up-grade training to me. Through that I leaned the concept of digital divide, p-to-p, cloud computing, wikinomics, and many other things.  

Now my vision of the use of IT in an EFL classroom goes far beyond language learning. Through English and IT, we have to introduce students to the unlimited and unexplored opportunities of the global communication networks. We have to show our students that these two things allow to bring one’s performance to the unprecedented level. We have to look far beyond the possibility of finding learning materials or on-line interaction with our students. IT allows us to target at global markets. New Business models appear. Teaching and learning on-line will allow us enjoying life. Instead of commuting and sitting in stuffy rooms, we will be able to couple learning with travel, more exciting private life, better payment rates, etc. 

This is my vision of IT implications for teaching English, and this is why I am here.

The Challenge of Online Interaction

I view technology as tools for people - not people serving these tools. We shouldn’t forget that behind every fascinating technological innovation there are people, and the users of their creations are people too. And speaking about our wish to learn webskills, we should imply learning online communication skills, a new type of skills, which didn’t exist before.

I think this first week of on-line interaction has shown that on-line interaction is a challenge per se. For instance, I was surprised to discover, that a few participants of our group turned out to be males, while after reading their introduction posts I visualized them as females, and vice versa, someone, who seemed to me male appeared to be female. It is just one example on the challenges of on-line interaction.

It was a great idea for our teachers to encourage us to start with building a community. As well as other participants, I pasted my introduction on the discussion board. But already by now, we see that it is growing more and more difficult to follow the threads, so I think it would be a good idea to repeat my introduction here.

I have read that some participants experience a bit of frustration while dealing with some technology for the first time. I wish to share my story, hoping that it will give them courage to carry on. Besides, this will help you to see the areas of my competence or gaps in it. As well as I am willing to help you, I would appreciate your advice too.

Thus, wholeheartedly embracing the task to reflect on the learning process, I will start off with telling you more about my background.

Acknowledgements

This blog has been started as a training task within into the Winter 2012 ‘Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web’ online learning course offered through the American English Institute at the University of Oregon, U.S.. The objective of the course is to enable EFL teachers to use appropriate technology to enhance the learning environment and outcomes for their students.

I feel highly honored to have been selected for this course and use this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation of the efforts of our teachers Jodi  and Sherie, who suggest such exciting and useful activities, keep sending us clear instructions and timely and patiently answer our questions and give us encouragement.

I would also like to give credit to the U.S. Department of State and the Public Affairs Section of US Embassy Minsk, Belarus,  for providing me with  this wonderful opportunity to get training and to get to the next level in my teaching.

And, last but not least, I wish to thank in advance the inspired and enthusiastic EFL teachers from across the world, whose friendly and supportive attitude and generous sharing of ideas and experience will help me make this blog worth visiting and reading.

Dear Webskills e-Teacher Participants and our caring tutors,

       

Welcome to my blog! Please, let me know what you think about it.

I hope we will have a lot of happy moments together and learn a lot of useful things.

Happy learning!

Yours,

Valentina (Val)